Los Angeles

This past weekend my father and I visited Los Angeles, California, the City of Angels.  My dad had received free tickets to the Minnesota Wild against Los Angeles Kings game and a hotel stay at the JW Marriott in downtown.  We got in on Friday afternoon and went back to the hotel and the proceeded to go to our cousin's house in Beverly Hills.  It was a nice dinner and we had fun reconnecting with our cousin's who we hadn't seen in a very long time.  We then went back to the hotel and retired fairly early.  The next morning we got up and decided to go check out USC and maybe do a self guided tour.  When we got there we realized that it was homecoming and we decided to buy fairly cheap tickets to the game against the Washington Huskies.  We followed the band around campus during the pregame festivities and by the end of the partying, the USC fight song was imbedded in my head for good.

We would then walk to Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and and witness an absolute dismantling.  USC was on top all game and just wouldn't let up winning 40-17 over the overmatched Huskies.  It was a very fun game to take in, and it was an overall great atmosphere.  The stadium was about 80% full and I couldn't help but think why it wouldn't be filled to capacity on such a large weekend for the Trojans.  It seats 92,000 and that would be a lot for a college football game, but Alabama, Penn State, and Michigan regularly fill their large stadiums.  I just hope that an NFL team, like the Minnesota Vikings takes the opportunity to jump to a stadium like that until the new stadium is built.  I talked to some citizens and they thought that the team most likely to move to LA would be the Jacksonville Jaguars, and that gave me a feeling of slight relief.

After the game we went back to the hotel and then proceeded to walk across LA Live to Staples Center. It was an incredibly nice arena and a great place to take in a hockey game.  Something that was slightly annoying though was that LA fans definitely do not understand hockey and screamed the whole game during terrible times.  The Wild played arguably their worst game this year and got outplayed entirely in a 5-2 loss.  It was a shame that we couldn't pull away with a win, but it was fun to take in a hockey game out of state nonetheless.

The last day of my stay in LA my father and I visited the campus of UCLA.  It was the most beautiful campus that I had ever stepped foot on and had an incredible aura to it.  I saw John Wooden's pyramid of success, and the Pauley Pavilion undergoing incredible renovations.  It was a very fun time and a great ending to an awesome trip to the City of Angels.